Thank you for highlighting the dangers of LLMs. There I is already an effort to address misinformation in the internet: Wikipedia. It is a major input to all LLMs and probably the source of all reasonable answers they give. The best curation of truth is not an authority (government, eminent scientist, LLM owner) or a democratic vote, but a dedicated and knowledgeable community. This is why peer review works and Wikipedia continues to be a reliable source of knowledge and facts. We should all support it as much as possible.
So sad that there are AI tools that misinform purposefully. I guess it's an extension of the long-term trend; first it was, "The computer says...", then it was "The Internet says...", now it will be, "AI says..." My go-to for hard data is still NOAA (remember the 350.org website when we were trying to get CO2 limited to 350 ppm?); now it's 429.64 ppm for April 2024: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
LLMs have the potential to sway opinions and narratives more and more as time goes on. As LLMs train on other human-biased AI-generated content that's flooding the internet, positive feedback loops can accelerate. Hopefully some sort of system is devised to reduce this effect to maintain a bit of rigor.
We, Humane Civilization Worldwide, argue that we must focus on absorbing CO2, sequestering carbon, and saving energy and resources, rather than 'transitioning to renewable energy.' We must have a rational transportation system, plant-based diets, build with wood and bamboo, not steel and concrete, etc. But mainly we must bring atmospheric greenhouse gases way down.
- We propose inundating organic material in stagnant, anoxic water, that may be covered with some earth, or burying the organic material in earth that is inundated with stagnant water (with hardly any oxygen reaching it). Organic material may include any plant material such as sargassum and other seaweed collected from beaches or harvested after ocean fertilization with Fe, any weeds, cut grass, leaves, harvested fast-growing plants that are cultivated for carbon sequestration, dead wood collected from forests; also landfill trash, possibly dead animals. (Decomposition by microorganisms essentially stops where fermentation of dying plants rapidly leads to oxygen depletion and acidification; adding significant amounts of salt may decrease decomposition even further due to its preservative effect, as in sauerkraut).
Landfills may be closed off with dikes around them, then inundated with stagnant water and covered with a layer of silt or clay-containing earth.
- Another way of greatly slowing decomposition of organic material consists in keeping it very dry and/or cold, or sinking it into deep cold lakes (there is hardly any oxygen there); and possibly in ’dead zones,' which are essentially anoxic parts of lakes and oceans.
- Particularly trees and other dead wood can easily be sequestered by keeping it dry in desert areas, covered by roofing with wide overhangs; or stored in sheds with screen walls in cold, relatively dry places, on mountains and Arctic regions.
- We also suggest irrigating forests that are dying due to droughts, and using wind powered snow making machines to extend snow fields and protect glaciers and permafrost.
The melting of glaciers and permafrost and the warming and acidification of oceans will change little if CO2 levels are a little lower but vicious cycles, the decreasing reflectivity of the earth's surface, etc. remain unchanged
Lets see why everyone is always full blast, it's Co2 stupid. unfortunately climate models are not taking into account what happens when large quantities of water vapor (HEAT) 40degree water-discharged into air temps -20 to -30 . This is happening every winter for the past 60 years, coming from every major former rivers in the subarctic,now impounded reservoirs, from Siberia to Northeastern Canada. These discharges generating electricity from Arctic mega dams only in winter. This transition from liquid to gas is heat going into an atmosphere that will rarely condense into clouds and rain in the Arctic region. But what happens are large domes of heat moving up into ionosphere and troposphere . On the ground it takes the form of fog ,fog that does not subside sometimes for months. And fog is a snow and ice killer the heat also remains iheat builds into ionsphere and troposphere which can effect jet stream with weather modifications sometimes thousands of miles away. For all you doubters: check out this
On LLM's and climate. You know of the huge difference between physics-driven forecasting models and history-driven AI models with the new euro updated AIFS model now out. Very exciting stuff for AI enthusiasts but the reality we have a terribly long way to go. Even run on exa-scale computers like the Frontier they are unreliable and we are approaching a point of diminishing returns.
Oh Andrew, if only any of this were true. I have been asking anyone to debate climate change for almost 20 years now. Neither you nor anyone else in the climate community will take me up on the offer. Grok 3 isn't the only one providing a "balanced" answer to your question. I just asked chatGPT just now, and it sounded a whole lot like Grok 3 you posted. I would love to debate anyone on this topic. Of course, that would include you and/or Zeke. My suspicions are that that offer will be declined. And no wonder. While you're trying to defend the existence of climate change science to the current administration, perhaps you should start engaging us in real debates. Just a suggestion...
Scientific debates over climate science occur continuously in the peer-reviewed literature. The cost of entry is writing a scientific paper that lays out your position and getting it published in the peer-reviewed literature.
Heh. Scott has evidently missed your point, Michael. "Shark tank" is a good metaphor for "peer review", i.e. mutual discipline by trained, competitive skeptics. Following the 2009 CRU-hack email kerfuffle, physicist and science fiction author Peter Watts wrote (https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=886):
"That’s how science works. It’s not a hippie love-in; it’s rugby. Every time you put out a paper, the guy you pissed off at last year’s Houston conference is gonna be laying in wait. Every time you think you’ve made a breakthrough, that asshole supervisor who told you you needed more data will be standing ready to shoot it down...
"Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it. And it does that at least partly fueled by our pettiness and our rivalries. Science is alchemy: it turns shit into gold. Keep that in mind the next time some blogger decries the ill manners of a bunch of climate scientists under continual siege by forces with vastly deeper pockets and much louder megaphones."
[Late edit: it's Peter, not Andrew, Watts! Dang. Don't get old if you can avoid it. MA]
"There is no way, no how that you are going to convince me that we are living in 'terrifying' times."
So why does he keep commenting here? Does he think Andrew or any other climate realist will change their minds and start agreeing with him? Does he think re-iterating long-debunked denialist memes will win new converts? Or is he merely bringing his fantasy culture war to his perceived adversaries?
BTW, don't miss Peter (not "Andrew") Watts's blunt responses to denialists in the comments on his post. They're as gratifying today as they were 16 years ago. Sadly, the same undead nonsense he confronted then keeps finding new brains to devour!
The denialists never give up do they? Some are just ignorant, some are ideologues, some have been in denial mode so long, they've become locked in their positions and impervious to refuting data. A few are funded by the fossil fuel industry. We deal with all those types but the habit energy ones are probs the most common but they're dying out. Fairly soon the changes will be so evident that the whole debate will be mooted.
Mal, in what way are we living in "terrifying" times right now? How is living right now more terrifying than 500, 400, 300, 200, 100, and 50 years ago? Please use long term trends in health outcomes to support your answer. Oh, that's right, we live longer than ever before, we have more money than ever before, and we have more prosperity than ever before in recorded history. Now that really is terrifying, isn't it? You know this, Andrew knows this, Gavin knows this, every reasonable person knows this. What is there even to debate? Game over for the alarmists.
Michael--you're spot on. The good ol' boys club is coming to an end. When the tickets to enter are controlled by a narrow echo-chamber, it doesn't leave much room for objectivity. However--times are changing!--peer review is quickly being supplanted by ai. Thank God!
I don't need to publish in a peer reviewed journal to illustrate the obvious--the world isn't burning--nd I have a lot of data to show that. Thanks to Pielke, Spencer, Curry, Watts et. al., the floodgates are starting to open. It is getting more and more embarrassing to cling to climate hysteria narrative.
"I have been asking anyone to debate climate change for almost 20 years now. Neither you nor anyone else in the climate community will take me up on the offer."
Aside from a distorted idea of "debate" in this context, the arrogance of assuming you or your list of notorious deniers and lukewarmers are smarter than the international consensus of thousands of trained, mutually disciplined professional scientists like Prof. Dessler, exposes you as a narcissistic pseudoskeptic. How do you know you're not fooling yourself?
This is not an argumentum ad-hominem. Claims to the contrary by "Pielke, Spencer, Curry, Watts et al." notwithstanding, any "skeptical" claim you might make in a "debate" of the format you imagine (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law), has in fact long since been considered on its merits and rejected by the professional peer consensus collectively, in iterative pre- and post-publication review under the standards of professional scientific culture. Rebunking them here evinces a tragic over-estimation of your knowledge and abilities, and leads to questions about your cognitive motivation.
LIsten below to a podcast, we provided the data and questions and reviewed EVERYTHING to be sure our work was not manipulated or misrepresented by AI. Here's a different slant on one of the main drivers of climate change that is not picked up by any of the climate models. an AI created with human research and data put in along with questions to be asked
Thank you for highlighting the dangers of LLMs. There I is already an effort to address misinformation in the internet: Wikipedia. It is a major input to all LLMs and probably the source of all reasonable answers they give. The best curation of truth is not an authority (government, eminent scientist, LLM owner) or a democratic vote, but a dedicated and knowledgeable community. This is why peer review works and Wikipedia continues to be a reliable source of knowledge and facts. We should all support it as much as possible.
Thank you. Very informative post today. Some readers might be interested to know that our PM Carney has created a new portfolio in his cabinet: "OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney created a new artificial intelligence ministry as he made some key changes and additions to his cabinet on Tuesday.". https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/former-journalist-evan-solomon-named-first-ever-federal-ai-minister/
The title of “Biggest Knob for the Climate” surely belongs to Donald Trump?
Oh, very good. But one has to know Brit-speak to catch the double meaning.
So sad that there are AI tools that misinform purposefully. I guess it's an extension of the long-term trend; first it was, "The computer says...", then it was "The Internet says...", now it will be, "AI says..." My go-to for hard data is still NOAA (remember the 350.org website when we were trying to get CO2 limited to 350 ppm?); now it's 429.64 ppm for April 2024: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
Grok is owned by XAI, that is, by Elon Musk. He used to worry about climate.
LLMs have the potential to sway opinions and narratives more and more as time goes on. As LLMs train on other human-biased AI-generated content that's flooding the internet, positive feedback loops can accelerate. Hopefully some sort of system is devised to reduce this effect to maintain a bit of rigor.
We, Humane Civilization Worldwide, argue that we must focus on absorbing CO2, sequestering carbon, and saving energy and resources, rather than 'transitioning to renewable energy.' We must have a rational transportation system, plant-based diets, build with wood and bamboo, not steel and concrete, etc. But mainly we must bring atmospheric greenhouse gases way down.
- We propose inundating organic material in stagnant, anoxic water, that may be covered with some earth, or burying the organic material in earth that is inundated with stagnant water (with hardly any oxygen reaching it). Organic material may include any plant material such as sargassum and other seaweed collected from beaches or harvested after ocean fertilization with Fe, any weeds, cut grass, leaves, harvested fast-growing plants that are cultivated for carbon sequestration, dead wood collected from forests; also landfill trash, possibly dead animals. (Decomposition by microorganisms essentially stops where fermentation of dying plants rapidly leads to oxygen depletion and acidification; adding significant amounts of salt may decrease decomposition even further due to its preservative effect, as in sauerkraut).
Landfills may be closed off with dikes around them, then inundated with stagnant water and covered with a layer of silt or clay-containing earth.
- Another way of greatly slowing decomposition of organic material consists in keeping it very dry and/or cold, or sinking it into deep cold lakes (there is hardly any oxygen there); and possibly in ’dead zones,' which are essentially anoxic parts of lakes and oceans.
- Particularly trees and other dead wood can easily be sequestered by keeping it dry in desert areas, covered by roofing with wide overhangs; or stored in sheds with screen walls in cold, relatively dry places, on mountains and Arctic regions.
- We also suggest irrigating forests that are dying due to droughts, and using wind powered snow making machines to extend snow fields and protect glaciers and permafrost.
The melting of glaciers and permafrost and the warming and acidification of oceans will change little if CO2 levels are a little lower but vicious cycles, the decreasing reflectivity of the earth's surface, etc. remain unchanged
humanecivilization.org
Lets see why everyone is always full blast, it's Co2 stupid. unfortunately climate models are not taking into account what happens when large quantities of water vapor (HEAT) 40degree water-discharged into air temps -20 to -30 . This is happening every winter for the past 60 years, coming from every major former rivers in the subarctic,now impounded reservoirs, from Siberia to Northeastern Canada. These discharges generating electricity from Arctic mega dams only in winter. This transition from liquid to gas is heat going into an atmosphere that will rarely condense into clouds and rain in the Arctic region. But what happens are large domes of heat moving up into ionosphere and troposphere . On the ground it takes the form of fog ,fog that does not subside sometimes for months. And fog is a snow and ice killer the heat also remains iheat builds into ionsphere and troposphere which can effect jet stream with weather modifications sometimes thousands of miles away. For all you doubters: check out this
https://r3genesis.substack.com/p/164-the-earth-sauna-audio-version?utm_source=podcast-email%2Csubstack&publication_id=899805&post_id=162800940&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=play_card_post_title&r=2ddkm6&triedRedirect=true
On LLM's and climate. You know of the huge difference between physics-driven forecasting models and history-driven AI models with the new euro updated AIFS model now out. Very exciting stuff for AI enthusiasts but the reality we have a terribly long way to go. Even run on exa-scale computers like the Frontier they are unreliable and we are approaching a point of diminishing returns.
Oh Andrew, if only any of this were true. I have been asking anyone to debate climate change for almost 20 years now. Neither you nor anyone else in the climate community will take me up on the offer. Grok 3 isn't the only one providing a "balanced" answer to your question. I just asked chatGPT just now, and it sounded a whole lot like Grok 3 you posted. I would love to debate anyone on this topic. Of course, that would include you and/or Zeke. My suspicions are that that offer will be declined. And no wonder. While you're trying to defend the existence of climate change science to the current administration, perhaps you should start engaging us in real debates. Just a suggestion...
Scientific debates over climate science occur continuously in the peer-reviewed literature. The cost of entry is writing a scientific paper that lays out your position and getting it published in the peer-reviewed literature.
But Scott no doubt views peer reviewed journals as a bit of an old boys club, rather than the sad shark tank reality.
Heh. Scott has evidently missed your point, Michael. "Shark tank" is a good metaphor for "peer review", i.e. mutual discipline by trained, competitive skeptics. Following the 2009 CRU-hack email kerfuffle, physicist and science fiction author Peter Watts wrote (https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=886):
"That’s how science works. It’s not a hippie love-in; it’s rugby. Every time you put out a paper, the guy you pissed off at last year’s Houston conference is gonna be laying in wait. Every time you think you’ve made a breakthrough, that asshole supervisor who told you you needed more data will be standing ready to shoot it down...
"Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it. And it does that at least partly fueled by our pettiness and our rivalries. Science is alchemy: it turns shit into gold. Keep that in mind the next time some blogger decries the ill manners of a bunch of climate scientists under continual siege by forces with vastly deeper pockets and much louder megaphones."
[Late edit: it's Peter, not Andrew, Watts! Dang. Don't get old if you can avoid it. MA]
Hi M.A.! Long time since we've spoke. I think Scott deliberately avoided having a two-front war. Andrew is formidable enough. I loved your cite!
Yes, Scott has already declared (https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/climate-skeptics-have-new-favorite/comment/103237035):
"There is no way, no how that you are going to convince me that we are living in 'terrifying' times."
So why does he keep commenting here? Does he think Andrew or any other climate realist will change their minds and start agreeing with him? Does he think re-iterating long-debunked denialist memes will win new converts? Or is he merely bringing his fantasy culture war to his perceived adversaries?
BTW, don't miss Peter (not "Andrew") Watts's blunt responses to denialists in the comments on his post. They're as gratifying today as they were 16 years ago. Sadly, the same undead nonsense he confronted then keeps finding new brains to devour!
The denialists never give up do they? Some are just ignorant, some are ideologues, some have been in denial mode so long, they've become locked in their positions and impervious to refuting data. A few are funded by the fossil fuel industry. We deal with all those types but the habit energy ones are probs the most common but they're dying out. Fairly soon the changes will be so evident that the whole debate will be mooted.
Mal, in what way are we living in "terrifying" times right now? How is living right now more terrifying than 500, 400, 300, 200, 100, and 50 years ago? Please use long term trends in health outcomes to support your answer. Oh, that's right, we live longer than ever before, we have more money than ever before, and we have more prosperity than ever before in recorded history. Now that really is terrifying, isn't it? You know this, Andrew knows this, Gavin knows this, every reasonable person knows this. What is there even to debate? Game over for the alarmists.
Michael--you're spot on. The good ol' boys club is coming to an end. When the tickets to enter are controlled by a narrow echo-chamber, it doesn't leave much room for objectivity. However--times are changing!--peer review is quickly being supplanted by ai. Thank God!
I don't need to publish in a peer reviewed journal to illustrate the obvious--the world isn't burning--nd I have a lot of data to show that. Thanks to Pielke, Spencer, Curry, Watts et. al., the floodgates are starting to open. It is getting more and more embarrassing to cling to climate hysteria narrative.
"I have been asking anyone to debate climate change for almost 20 years now. Neither you nor anyone else in the climate community will take me up on the offer."
Aside from a distorted idea of "debate" in this context, the arrogance of assuming you or your list of notorious deniers and lukewarmers are smarter than the international consensus of thousands of trained, mutually disciplined professional scientists like Prof. Dessler, exposes you as a narcissistic pseudoskeptic. How do you know you're not fooling yourself?
This is not an argumentum ad-hominem. Claims to the contrary by "Pielke, Spencer, Curry, Watts et al." notwithstanding, any "skeptical" claim you might make in a "debate" of the format you imagine (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law), has in fact long since been considered on its merits and rejected by the professional peer consensus collectively, in iterative pre- and post-publication review under the standards of professional scientific culture. Rebunking them here evinces a tragic over-estimation of your knowledge and abilities, and leads to questions about your cognitive motivation.
All IMHO, of course.
LIsten below to a podcast, we provided the data and questions and reviewed EVERYTHING to be sure our work was not manipulated or misrepresented by AI. Here's a different slant on one of the main drivers of climate change that is not picked up by any of the climate models. an AI created with human research and data put in along with questions to be asked
https://r3genesis.substack.com/p/164-the-earth-sauna-audio-version?utm_source=podcast-email%2Csubstack&publication_id=899805&post_id=162800940&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=play_card_post_title&r=2ddkm6&triedRedirect=true